For years, whenever Japanese Americans would get together after World War II, one question would come up: “Which camp were you in?”
Like where you went to school, what you did for work, and whether you rooted for the Dodgers or the Giants, it was a form of small talk but probed at something deeper. The question referred to 10 wartime prisons where the government locked up more than 120,000 men, women and children, a majority of them U.S. citizens, because of their ethnicity.
Those who answered “Tule Lake” say they were often met with silence, then scorn: “Oh, you were one of those.”
Some even turned away in disgust.
Many of those who were sent to the Northern California camp had answered no to two questions on a loyalty test. One asked whether they would serve in the U.S. military, and the other whether they would swear absolute allegiance to the United States in its war against Japan. They came to be called the “No-Nos,” and they bore the label of being disloyal to America in the government’s eyes.
